Critters, The Bush, and a Deluxe Apartment in the Sky

The Big Prawn has been rehabbed!  The longtime iconic crustacean in Ballina had fallen into disrepair when I last visited in 2013, and was sitting forlornly in a vacant lot, possibly awaiting demolition.  But the Prawn was rebuilt, fancied up, and remounted in front of a Bunnings home appliance store.  It has resumed its proud place on the Ballina landscape.  The Lizards were impressed.

We stayed in Yamba for a couple days.  I had a fine swim in the oceanfront pool shown here.  Many New South Wales beach towns have these.  They're free, and replenished by the surf every day at high tide.  Waves were washing into this one as we swam.  In 2013 this area had had a series of storms with massive surf, and the pool was closed, with large logs in it.  Yamba is another of my favorite beach towns and it was very nice to hang out here for a couple days.

Yamba, like numerous beach towns on the east coast of Oz, has a large river running into the ocean at the townsite.  You can go surfing and waterskiing on the same day.  Yamba has a working fishing fleet, some of which is visible in the background...blow up the pic for a better look.  You'll also see much of the local pelican squadron, roosting on the pier.

A cool tree in the rainforest at O'Reillly's, a great resort high in the mountains of SE Queensland.

Two of the local residents at O'Reilly's are the regent bowerbird, on the left, and the crimson rosella to the right.  The bowerbird is the resort logo.  The rosellas are more numerous and swoop around, bludging goodies from the guests.  They and the king parrots will even land on your head!

A massive tree in the rainforest, with buttressed roots and strangler figs.

We went to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary near Brisbane.  Rhonda and Loreen got their pictures taken holding a koala.  There were a lot of other critters there, too.  These red kangaroos are native to the interior...you have to go close to the Outback to see them in the wild.  They and many gray kangaroos were in an enclosure you could enter...you can buy roo goodies and hand feed them.

This cassowary cannot be hand fed.  They are rather surly and have massive claws on their feet; they've been known to disembowel folks who hassle them.

This goanna just roams around the grounds at Lone Pine, bludging tucker from the tourons.  There are quite a lot of these blokes around.

A shy koala.

After our Lone Pine visit, we drove to our lodgings in Brisbane.  We had a three bedroom apartment at Meriton Suites, on the 70th floor!  I was reading an old diary from a trip I made here in 1988 and I was talking about having a room in the sky at a luxury hotel...on the 16th floor.  That was about as high as you could go back then, but the Brisbane CBD has grown big time since then, to say the least.

At night the view was stunning!  The black void on the lower left is the Brisbane River, coursing through the city far below.